Once upon a time there was a little copywriter (that is me, Stefan), who spilled a cup of coffee. What emerged from the depth of the darkest espresso available was a small monster. It looked at me and said: “Draw me, draw me, draw meeee!”

And then I drew. The next day I thought “Well, I could do it daily, just to be creative every day.” So I took a spoon and spilled some coffee on paper. My colleagues looked at me the way people look at people who go completely nuts. Well, they didn’t know.

Since then, after more than 480 coffee-monsters, I use better paper, some of the best coffee and some cool tools to make the monsters more perfect. Also, I write little stories for every single one which makes them a little more worthwhile. And the best part is: It makes people happy!

My favorite moment up until now was, when someone wrote me, that the monsters make her happy everyday. This is so cheerful and because of messages like that I do it again and again. It never gets old for me, because a spill is never the same. The coffeemonsters are my way of expressing my love for comics, coffee and randomness. So here they are, feel free to tell me what you think. :)

Monster #468

For monster Jim there was only one thing going to be the peak of the week. The search for some cattle and eating it as a small snack.

Monster #432

Fiiiiiiiiiireeeeeee! This monster is clearly on fire. It has a burning arm and a flame as legs. It will roast it’s prey right away. Muhahaha!

Monster #480

This monster is so sweet, it would just eat you right away. And it really could because its friggin 30ft high and its preferred munchie are “humans”.

Monster #275

One morning coffee-frog Paul had to cross a road. And because the cars were fast that morning, he had to dance like he never did before to avoid them. Schubidu, like germans would say.

Monster #219

While Bobby was spectating what was going on behind his back, he decided to take a look on what was lying in front of him.

Monster #282

It’s like men watching beautiful women. Sometimes the eyes just pop out. Luckily people are no monsters and it doesn’t happen to them for real like it happens to this monster here.

Monster #447

The official @btconf monster!

Monster #479

Jumping around with Leo! Whoooo.

Monster #403

It tried to get up early but was late anyways. Argh!

Monster #19

Monster #346

Jumping on one finger. I wanna see you pull that off!

Monster #456

The sleep embraced him for too long. Almost four hours passed since he took the one-hour-sleeping-as-deep-as-a-crocodile-pills. But little did he know that the effect on coffeemonster-crocodiles was even more heavy.

Monster #466

The coffee went gone too fast and then it just happened out of nowhere. Fishorman lost his heart and tried to hold it in his chest. But he lost and the coffee went on without him but with his heart.

Monsters #477

Here is a piggy monster, ready to fetch a to be thrown ball. Go, piggie. Go!

Monster #343

4 eyes are better than two – because hunting humans is hard. Even for monsters like this one!

Monster #223

A little four-eyed coffeemonster playing with it’s small dog-monster. I bet it’s got an eye on everything.

My latest project was “Old Glory” – a 10 x 16 feet American flag created from nailing over 20,000 individually punched and crimped Budweiser bottle caps to plywood. It’s the largest bottle cap art I’ve managed so far. It made its debut at the Stagecoach Music Festival in Indio, California.

What I loved about the project, was how iconic it was – you can’t get more American than Bud caps. Bottle caps have long had a place in the folk art tradition as a decorative element. I love that the artwork traveled from coast-to-coast. Whatever your idea of America is, I think this piece speaks to that. This goes beyond “Made In America”, it’s a sculpture “Made of Americana”.

It’s also amazing how bottle cap mosaics interact with the light. When you look at one or two caps from any brand, they’re generally not all that impressive. But when you group hundreds or thousands of them together and let them catch the sunlight, they truly glow. The combination of the background color with the logo can create vibrant color tones that are lively and wholly unexpected.

The scale of the piece was so large, it was a perfect opportunity to show how I made the bottle cap flag. I worked with filmmaker Stephen Blauweiss to achieve a short, five-minute, behind-the-scenes film, which will air shortly on PBS.

Old Glory Budwesier Bottle Cap Mosaic Flag

Old Glory At Stagecoach Festival

Street artists began painting on the walls of the Long Beach Museum of Art on June 26th of this year. The project, titled “Vitality and Verve: Transforming the Urban Landscape,” will feature a select group of artists that are either exploring urban art outside of the studio, or are thinking about taking up the studio instead of the street.

“Most of the works in this exhibition will be created on our gallery walls using both traditional and non-traditional art media ,” explains Ron Nelson, Executive Director of the Long Beach Museum of Art. “Once the exhibition ends, the walls will be repainted and prepared for the next exhibition. Therefore, it is important for art enthusiasts to see this amazing exhibition before it closes.”

Perceptual Shift is the latest in my series of sculptural works that I refer to as expanded graphics, limited color graphics that are exploded and rendered in three dimensional space. This work is the first of its kind, it’s a 3D halftone. Black and white halftone images are traditionally produced using black circles on a white surface. This work moves away from the traditional picture plane using the white room as its canvas. The flat black circles have become floating black spheres. When viewing this piece a perceptual shift occurs as a seemingly chaotic array of black particles suddenly align to form a highly organized graphic image. To see the illusion, the viewer’s perception of three dimensional space needs to change and become perceived as flat. Once you see the illusion, it contains within it another illusion; one of another space and of volume.

For the past twenty years I have been rendering illusions of two dimensional images in three dimensional space. I began this body of work as a way to excite and capture the attention of the viewer by presenting an alternative way of experiencing space and image. The suspended sculptures are essentially mobiles for grown ups. They are vehicles for information and starting points for conversations. I aim to create rewarding visual experiences that leave the viewer contemplating their stance on important issues.

The imagery of the eye was inspired by information privacy and the mass surveillance and data collection being conducted by the United States government. I feel this is a very important issue that more people need to be talking and thinking about. Our government is violating our rights and no one seems to care.

Be sure to check out the music of my incredibly talented daughter Iris Isadora!

Side view

Close-up

Opening Night

Process

I travel, take photos, and draw sketches on them to create my imaginary world. Almost all photos are taken with a mobile phone (Nexus 5) and sketches are drawn using Autodesk Sketchbook app on the same device.

I’ve tried to augment the feeling each location gives to the viewer. If you looked at any of these illustrations and simply smiled, I’ve reached my ultimate goal :)